A Wholehearted Sabbath
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It was August 21st of last year when something out of the ordinary happened. Schools closed. People took off from work early, or even the whole day if they could. Read more →
Space of Renewal
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Sabbath opens up a space of renewal and spiritual sustenance. We hope that the CLF provides that for you through Quest Monthly, our online worship, daily reflections from the Daily Compass and more. Read more →
The Ritual of Sabbath
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I fell in love with the Sabbath many years ago when my work took me to Israel. Until then, I’d never thought much about the Sabbath, except to be annoyed when stores were closed on Sunday and I needed to buy something. Read more →
Vacation as Spiritual Discipline
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A series in the Cathy comic strip about vacationing caught my eye, perhaps because it was really about the opposite. Read more →
From Your Minister
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Years ago, I directed the UUA’s Washington Office. It was a challenging time in U.S. history, marked by the passage of the civil-rights-denying Patriot Act, pompous patriotic righteousness about the need to attack Iraq, support for fundamentalist Christian-style “family values,” and endless attacks on vulnerable communities. Read more →
REsources for Living
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A few years ago, various members of the CLF staff were talking about taking a social media Sabbath for one day a week, and shared things like the graphics they would post to Facebook letting people know that they were unavailable for the day. Read more →
Did You Know?
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You can listen to audio recordings of Quest Monthly, read back issues or get electronic versions of the text to share with friends (and much more) at questformeaning.org Read more →
Adjacent to Eternity
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[One] who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil. Read more →
Sabbath
July/August 2018
The Sabbath is the link between the paradise which has passed away and the paradise which is yet to come. —Andrew Wylie
Articles
A Wholehearted Sabbath
It was August 21st of last year when something out of the ordinary happened. Schools closed. People took off from work early, or even the whole day if they could. Read more »
Space of Renewal
Sabbath opens up a space of renewal and spiritual sustenance. We hope that the CLF provides that for you through Quest Monthly, our online worship, daily reflections from the Daily Compass and more. Read more »
The Ritual of Sabbath
I fell in love with the Sabbath many years ago when my work took me to Israel. Until then, I’d never thought much about the Sabbath, except to be annoyed when stores were closed on Sunday and I needed to buy something. Read more »
Vacation as Spiritual Discipline
A series in the Cathy comic strip about vacationing caught my eye, perhaps because it was really about the opposite. Read more »
From Your Minister
Years ago, I directed the UUA’s Washington Office. It was a challenging time in U.S. history, marked by the passage of the civil-rights-denying Patriot Act, pompous patriotic righteousness about the need to attack Iraq, support for fundamentalist Christian-style “family values,” and endless attacks on vulnerable communities. Read more »
REsources for Living
A few years ago, various members of the CLF staff were talking about taking a social media Sabbath for one day a week, and shared things like the graphics they would post to Facebook letting people know that they were unavailable for the day. Read more »
Did You Know?
You can listen to audio recordings of Quest Monthly, read back issues or get electronic versions of the text to share with friends (and much more) at questformeaning.org Read more »
Adjacent to Eternity
One who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil. Read more »
Sabbath
The Sabbath is the link between the paradise which has passed away and the paradise which is yet to come. —Andrew Wylie Read more »
Summer and Sabbath
My thirteen-year-old daughter and I have different ideas about what it is that she will be doing with her summer vacation, which will be upon us in a few days. I think that the summer before she enters high school would be a good time to get a jump start on subjects she finds challenging. Also a good time to learn to type properly, or play the piano. Not to mention that there are a good number of household projects that could use some manual labor. I know that she will be bored with the vacant hours, and I have warned her repeatedly that her days will not be spent in front of the computer or TV screen.
And I keep asking her just what it is that she expects to do this summer. What is it that her days will look like when she is not off at camp or visiting an out of town friend? All I get for an answer is that she doesn’t know – and doesn’t want to be asked.
She doesn’t have a way to say it, but I think what she is looking towards is sabbatical time – a Sabbath of the school year where she can, to paraphrase Whitman, loaf and invite her soul. She wants to be free from pressure, free from schedule, free from things that have to be done and other people’s expectations that she do what other people think is good for her. That’s what the Sabbath is for. It is a time of forced openness, when you give up work and see what remains. Outside of the structure of daily life your soul gets a chance to stretch out.
OK, I confess I’m a little scared to see what remains for my young teen outside of her structured life. It’s hard to trust that her soul will be well served by weeks of openness. But there’s something to be said for being bored, for sitting with the emptiness long enough that something from deep inside might come to fill it. There’s not that much to be said for being the mom who has to listen to the whining that accompanies that boredom until that mysterious something comes along, but I guess that comes with the territory.
There isn’t any magic formula that decrees how much of our lives needs to be given to work, or to improving our selves and the world around us. But the tradition of the sabbath and the sabbatical teaches that a seventh of our time is not too much to give our souls the space to expand. I’ll let you know how it goes.